


The Truth About Pluto

by TeaRoses



Category: On The Importance of Space Travel - Svetlana Chmakova (Comic)
Genre: F/M, Space Flight, light shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan just wants Jeannie to admit she's from Earth.  Jeannie just wants Nathan to take a little trip with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novembersmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta, who helped improve this story a great deal.

Nathan was sick of this. He had to do something, or Jeannie would keep embarrassing herself and him.

He didn't mind her talking about Pluto to him now and then, at least not anymore. If she wanted to make up stories, even ridiculous ones, he could live with it. He'd even play along, a little bit, and ask her questions about her travels through the solar system. Nathan knew he shouldn't do that, but it was like asking a little kid what he got from Santa Claus -- you know there isn't one, but you still ask him what Santa brought him for Christmas. Now and then he would point out some flaw in her stories, for example that it would actually be very difficult to land a spaceship on Saturn's rings, but Jeannie would just smile and keep talking as if he hadn't said anything. 

At least the stories were creative. Some of them were pretty cute, too, especially the ones about all the weird creatures back "home." The problem was that no one else thought it was cute. Everybody at school thought Jeannie was crazy, and no one would hang around with Nathan if Jeannie was with him. And Jeannie was almost always with him. Sometimes even if she wasn't there people teased him about her. Nathan had hoped that after all this time people would grow up a little and stop picking on them, but it actually got worse as they got older and people started thinking Jeannie might be his girlfriend. Lately people had started calling Nathan "Prince Pluto."

If you talked to her about movies or video games, Jeannie sounded almost normal. It did get a little weird if they watched science fiction together. Last time he got a five minute speech about all the things the movie got wrong about Venus. But as long as they stuck to action movies and comedies, Jeannie would just laugh and clap and talk about the characters like anybody else. Nathan got jealous of how good Jeannie was at video games -- she could beat him at most of the competitive ones and do better than he could in most of the single-player games too. He got jealous in a different way when Jeannie paid particular attention to a movie scene featuring a muscled hero with no shirt. 

She did like to wear strange clothes sometimes, that came in really weird colors and didn't match very well, but Nathan put that down to the fact that she didn't have a mother around. And now and then she'd just say something really bizarre, like a proverb that made no sense at all. (Her favorite was "What rock could turn into your brother?" and she seemed to think that could end arguments somehow.) So maybe she wasn't totally normal, but those little things Nathan didn't mind. She always made him laugh, especially after a hard day when he really needed a lift. Jeannie was a lot of fun, really, if you could ignore the whole "I'm a princess from outer space" bit. But it seemed like Nathan and her father were the only ones who could.

Nathan actually didn't talk that much to Jeannie's dad. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he played along with Jeannie's stories a lot more than Nathan did. Jeannie would say "Hey dad, do you remember Io?" and her dad would tell some story about their travels there. It really bothered Nathan, because her father should be telling her to stop this already, or at least to tone it down. But he kept saying it "didn't matter" if Jeannie thought she was from Pluto, and he never said anything about where she really was from, at least not in front of Nathan. Didn't her father realize how mean the other kids were being to his daughter?

Jeannie usually put on a brave face and acted like she didn't care what people said. Nathan knew it must really hurt her though. Sometimes Jeannie tried to be friends with other kids by talking about normal stuff. But it didn't help, because every time she started talking about her life, it was a life in outer space and everyone would laugh. Then Nathan hurt, for her sake. Jeannie was a great friend, but no one but him would ever know that because she kept going around talking about faster-than-light vacation homes.

Nathan wasn't about to tell Jeannie to get lost. He could never live with himself if he did that. Most of the time he just resigned himself to the fact that Jeannie was almost his only friend. Sometimes he told himself that he didn't even want to be friends with anyone who didn't like her. It wasn't that simple though. Nathan was angry at the other kids for the way they treated Jeannie, but he couldn't blame them that much for thinking Jeannie was crazy. It _was_ crazy to go around thinking you were from another planet. Nathan had looked Pluto up on the internet, and he found out that the temperature there was over 300 degrees below zero. Nothing could live in that. He had told Jeannie that, but she had just said, "I already told you that my people live in underground caverns." And it was true, she had said that, though Nathan knew it was still impossible.

Nathan was tired of people laughing and pointing at them. So he had come up with an idea that would make everything better, or at least a little more bearable. If he could just prove that she wasn't from Pluto, she'd have to stop saying she was. Maybe she could have a normal life, or at least a life that was only slightly weird. She could have friends and go to parties and do all the other things she was missing out on.

Nathan knew Jeannie wasn't really crazy. She had just somehow convinced herself that this story was the truth. It must be a game, maybe something she and her father had started when she was little, but she'd been playing it for so long it was real to her now. That didn't make her crazy, just confused.

He didn't want to hurt her. She was his friend, and he felt bad for her having to be apart from her mother. Nathan had asked her a thousand times by now where her mother was, but she always just said she was back on Pluto. He was pretty sure she was really in a mental hospital or something like that, something so bad that her father didn't want Jeannie to know the truth about it. Maybe her mom was even in jail! That would explain why she never even came home for a visit. No wonder Jeannie would rather believe her mom was millions of miles away. She showed him letters from her mom sometimes, but they were in a strange alphabet that Nathan had never seen before. He was pretty sure Jeannie had made it up, or maybe found it on the internet somewhere.

He wasn't about to investigate where Jeannie's mom really was. That would be going too far. He just wanted to find some way to prove that Jeannie had grown up on Earth like everybody else. Sure, it would hurt her at first. Who wouldn't rather be a princess from another planet than an ordinary Earth girl? In the end it would be good for her though. If her father wasn't going to tell her she was too old for the game, somebody else would have to. 

The best thing would be if he could find some old baby pictures of Jeannie that were definitely taken on Earth, like at Disneyland or something. Nathan was pretty sure there wasn't any Disneyland on Pluto. But there never seemed to be many photos at their house. Jeannie's latest school photo was up on the wall, but that was about it. There were probably some albums up in the attic, but he couldn't think of a good excuse to go looking around in Jeannie's attic.

Then he remembered that her father had a file box on a table in the living room, and it didn't have a lock on it. There had to be something good in there. He would just have to wait for a chance to look.

The next time he was over at Jeannie's they watched a movie together. Jeannie held his hand for a little bit, a habit she was getting into that Nathan liked. When the movie was over the phone rang and Jeannie went into the kitchen to answer it. Nathan ran for her dad's file box and opened it up. Right there was a folder labeled "Official Documents." In it was Jeannie's birth certificate. It had her father's name and her mother's name and said she'd been born in the local hospital right here. There were a few photocopies of the certificate in the file box too, and Nathan folded up one of the copies and stuck it under his shirt. He didn't want to show it Jeannie right away. He wanted time to think about how to break it to her gently.

That night in his room he looked at the birth certificate and thought for a long time. How did you tell someone that they were human when they desperately wanted not to be? He pictured Jeannie's face when she saw the paper. Would she cry? Would she hate him for showing it to her? Maybe he shouldn't do this at all. But he had to. It wouldn't be fair to Jeannie to let her keep believing she was an alien. Even if people didn't stop making fun of her, and unfortunately Nathan knew they might not, she still had to at least try to act like a regular person. Every time her asked her what kind of job she wanted to have someday, she just answered, "I'm going to be an Empress!"

The next day was school, and Nathan knew better than to tell her something like that in school. While they walking home, he tried to get up the courage to say something. He considered and reconsidered, and finally he decided to just tell her as gently as possible.

"Jeannie, I have to tell you something," he began.

"I have to tell you something too," she said. 

"You go first," Nathan said nervously.

"I have to go back to Pluto to help my mom. The crown jewels are missing and I have to help get them back. I thought you might want to come with me, and my dad said it was OK, so would you like to?"

Nathan winced. What was next? Would she expect them to sit in a cardboard box and pretend it was a spaceship like five-year-olds would? Now he knew he had to tell her. He liked her too much to let her keep doing this.

"Um... Jeannie..."

"You don't want to?"

"Um..."

Jeannie grabbed his hand and said, "Let's go this way while you make up your mind!" She pulled him toward a dirt path Nathan hadn't taken in years. 

"Your house is that way. Shouldn't we--"

"Don't worry about it."

Nathan clutched the birth certificate. He was so afraid that she would never speak to him again if he showed it to her.

"I don't think I can go to Pluto," he said. "I'd miss too much school." He gave a forced laugh as Jeannie looked at him strangely.

"It's a really short trip with our ship. We'll be back by tonight. You already told your mom you'd be home late, didn't you?"

"So you are going to come back," said Nathan.

"My father and I are here as ambassadors of peace," Jeannie said. "We can't go back to live on Pluto until my father has met with government officials and told them we want to make an alliance and trade with Earth."

Jeannie had never told him that little detail before. She had always been a little vague about the actual reason she was on Earth. Nathan wondered for a minute if Jeannie's father also thought he was from Pluto. That would be scary, especially if he started calling government offices and telling them. Her father was keeping the birth certificate though, so he probably didn't think that. 

They kept walking down the path. Nathan could see a farmhouse in the distance, but as they got closer he realized that the place was deserted. What the heck did Jeannie want here?

"If you and your dad are here on a secret mission, why are you always telling people where you're from?" he asked.

"It's not a secret at all. And that's supposed to part of making peace," she replied. "I was supposed to reach out to Earth children and show them we can be friends even though we're from different planets. But it didn't work out that way, because people just keep laughing at me." 

Nathan could hear the disappointment in her voice. "I don't care if they make fun of me," she said bravely. "But I let my father down by not being able to make a bond with Earth kids." 

"Isn't your father afraid people will laugh at him too? Or... or something worse?" he asked. He had seen a lot of movies, and when alien ambassadors came to Earth things usually didn't go too well.

"He can prove what he's saying by showing them our technology. Actually he's been communicating with a few scientists for a while, ever since we were still back home, so they're going to help him. He's going to start meeting with Earth officials soon. It's complicated though, because you have so many rulers here. Back home we just have my mom the Empress."

"Why did she stay there?"

Jeannie gave him another strange look. "Because the Empress needs to be with her people, of course."

That actually made sense, so Nathan shut up, but just for a little while. "But can't you visit her all the time, if it's such a short trip?" 

"The ship has to go faster than light. That's very expensive to do, and even though I'm the Princess, I'm not supposed to use the ship just to have fun in. I'm only going now because I have to. It's my responsibility to get the crown jewels back."

Nathan knew she would have a heck of a story about this "trip" and he was almost looking forward to it. He would hear all about the beautiful crown jewels and probably about how Jeannie had fought bad guys to get them back, though there usually weren't any bad guys or fighting in her stories. This was another unbelievable thing, though. What kind of government would put a kid in charge of the crown jewels? 

"You must miss Pluto a lot," he said.

"Of course I do! Every day I remember what it was like, living in the royal palace and learning our history, making certain I can be a wise ruler when I grow up. Here on Earth the grown-ups don't want to let kids do anything important, but it's totally different on Pluto. And there no one laughs at me."

"Because you're the princess?"

"No, because kids from Pluto aren't as mean as kids here. We're not perfect, but usually we don't make fun of each other or call each other names. I have all sorts of friends back there, and of course I can be with my mother."

Nathan suddenly had to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. "Um..."

"Oh, you had something to tell me too. What was it?"

"Nothing," he said in a hoarse voice. "It was nothing." 

He crumpled the birth certificate and when Jeannie wasn't looking he dropped it in the dirt and stepped on it. She didn't notice anything and just kept pulling him toward an old abandoned barn.

"We're not supposed to go in there," Nathan said. "You don't want to get hurt again, do you?"

"You're going to have to be braver than that if you want to come to Pluto with me," said Jeannie as she opened the barn doors.

"I can't--" Nathan stopped. Taking up most of the barn was a huge gold-colored sphere with small windows in one side. And it was floating two feet off the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

Nathan soon reached the conclusion that he was looking at a spaceship. He stood there for a moment, trying to figure out if this was a trick and what kind of trick it could be. Maybe the "spaceship" was really some kind of balloon? But no, he could tell it was made from thick metal. It wasn't hanging from the roof either. 

Jeannie opened the door of the ship and Nathan followed nervously. When he got inside it was easy to tell that this thing was real. Someone making a fake ship would have put lights and controls on it like in the movies. But this thing had no controls at all that Nathan could see. There were just the burnished gold walls, the seats around the edge, which were a little higher than they should be, and the small windows. If it hadn't been floating, Nathan might still have thought Jeannie was trying to fool him somehow, but it was. It was also making a soft high-pitched humming sound, more like an insect than a machine.

"You do want to come with me, right?" Jeannie asked. "We have to get past the earth's atmosphere first. Then the faster-than-light travel will take us there. I wanted my dad to come, because I know he misses mom too, but he's always talking to his scientists so he's really busy. Everything is automated though, so we don't need my dad along."

"I--" said Nathan, but he couldn't complete a sentence. It was starting to hit him that it was real, all of it. Jeannie was talking about riding to Pluto because they really were going to ride to Pluto, right now. And all the things she had said must be true, all those stories that people had made fun of her for. That he himself had made fun of her for.

She really came from another planet. Her mother was really an Empress and not in jail. She really took vacations on Mars. Now they were headed to go get the crown jewels back, though Nathan had no idea how they were supposed to do that.  
"I know you don't have a lot of time, but like I said, we'll be back early since it's faster than light."

Nathan opened his mouth to point out that nothing could go faster than light, and then shut it. Finally he just murmured weakly, "But-- I thought-- I always thought--"

"You always thought I was making it all up," said Jeannie. She didn't even sound bitter when she said it. Nathan could hear the laughter in her voice.

"Not that exactly," he said.

"Tell me the truth," said Jeannie in a teasing tone. 

"Okay, yeah, I always thought you were making it all up. You let me think that. You let the whole school think that!"

"I know," she said. "When I was really young I thought people would believe me, even though that seems silly now. But I really thought people would understand. I mean, if I met someone from another planet, I wouldn't want to insult them. I'd be nice to them." 

That was true, thought Nathan to himself sadly. She had always been nice to people, even the ones that made fun of her. Including Nathan, even though it was all his fault she'd had that terrible fall.

"So you didn't make up any of it? I mean, it's true about your mom and the crown jewels and all of this?"

"You're sitting in my spaceship and you still think I might have made it all up?"

"No, not exactly. It's just that you had proof! You could have brought the kids from school here and showed them."

Jeannie shook her head. "I didn't want them all to see my ship. My ship is special. So do you want to go or not? I have to leave now if I'm going to be there in time."

Nathan felt a sudden rush of fear. He'd often thought about space travel and what it would be like, but he'd never thought he'd have a chance to do it. But what if it wasn't really safe? This was an awfully small ship to take all the way to Pluto. And what was this about the crown jewels? Could he get hurt trying to get them back?

He looked at Jeannie. She wouldn't be taking him if it could get him killed, and her father wouldn't let her use the ship if she could hurt herself. He did believe her when she said her father wanted her to go. Jeannie didn't tell lies, except about-- Jeannie didn't tell lies.

"Of course I want to go!" he said in a firm voice.

Jeannie put her hand on the wall and muttered something Nathan couldn't understand. The barn roof slid open and Nathan clutched the seat beneath him as the sphere rose. 

"How come your ship can leave Earth without any rockets carrying it?" he asked Jeannie. He knew that was impossible, but since it was happening he was just going to have to accept it.

"It gets energy from the sun," Jeannie replied.

"But it was locked up in that barn!"

"Not that way. It's kind of hard to explain and sometimes I don't understand all of it myself. I'm a little behind in science."

"You always get As in science," Nathan protested. 

"Earth science is a little less complicated than Pluto science."

She means we're not as smart as Plutonians, Nathan thought, but she's too polite to say so.

The ship was still ascending. "Is the army going to shoot at us or something?" he asked.

"Earth armies can't see our ships."

A disturbing thought occurred to Nathan. Usually on TV or in comic books the first reaction of aliens was a little more hostile than what Jeannie was talking about. And people at school had treated Jeannie really badly. What if she had a secret plan to launch an invasion? He couldn't believe that of her but he couldn't help wondering about it. "You really do like Earth people?" he asked hesitantly. "You don't want to hurt us?"

"I like you," Jeannie replied.

Nathan blushed.

"Pluto doesn't even have an army," Jeannie assured him. "I meant it when I said we just want peace. You can still trust me, even now that you don't think I'm crazy," said Jeannie.

If everyone on Pluto was like Jeannie, then they were definitely safe. Finally he got up the nerve to look out the window. He expected to see tiny houses, like you would from an airplane, but they were headed away from Earth much faster than that. Soon he was seeing whole continents and oceans and the round curve of the Earth. And that was when he realized he was floating. That scared him too, for just a minute, but it was actually really cool. 

Nathan made awkward swimming motions in the air. Jeannie was floating too, and grinning at him. They both started laughing and trying to chase each other, only to end up somersaulting and bouncing gently off the ship's sides.

"We'll be making the jump with the faster-than-light drive soon," said Jeannie. "Don't worry. My father set it up. I'm too young to drive."

Nathan wasn't sure if she was kidding or not. "So you aren't really secretly a hundred years old?" he asked suspiciously. Now he wasn't sure if he was kidding or not.

"I'm really the same age you are. I promise."

"In Earth years?" he asked. He had read somewhere that years on Pluto were two-hundred and forty-eight years long.

"In Earth years," Jeannie said. 

"And you're really a girl?"

"What does that matter?" asked Jeannie.

He looked down at their joined hands and thought for a moment. "I guess it doesn't," he said.

"The whole faster-than-light thing is kind of weird. I'm used to it but you might not like it very much."

Jeannie let go of Nathan, put both hands on the wall, and again spoke in a language Nathan didn't know. 

Nathan heard the soft ringing of a bell. Weird was not the right word for what happened to him next. He felt like everything got suddenly tiny, like he was just a point like they had learned about in math class. No, not like he did, like everything did. The whole universe was a little tiny point. Nathan wondered if they had somehow made a mistake and destroyed the ship. 

Then suddenly everything was there again. Nathan felt as if the whole ship, and possibly everything else in the universe, had been moved around and rearranged. Everything still looked the same though. "Are you okay?" he asked Jeannie.

"I'm fine," she said. "How about you? I know it's pretty scary the first few times you have to do it."

"I wasn't scared!" Nathan protested.

"Not even a little?" Jeannie asked.

Nathan thought about how Jeannie had always told him the truth, even though she knew he wouldn't believe it. He sighed and said, "Yeah. I was scared. I can't even describe how that felt."

"Now that we're here we can land and go to Wellspirit," said Jeannie.

"Wellspirit?"

"That's the cavern the royal palace is in, or at least that's the closest I can get to it in English. We have to get the crown jewels back before we can go to the palace though."

"How many languages do you speak?" Nathan asked.

"Well, English, and Plutonian, and a little French but you know I'm not so great in French class."

"How come you never spoke Plutonian to me?"

Suddenly Jeannie looked just a tiny bit sad. "I knew you would say it was just gibberish," she said.

And I probably would have, Nathan thought to himself.

Now the ship was moving again, and when Nathan looked out the window he could see Pluto appoaching. At first it was a pale yellow disk, then they got closer and the disc grew until Nathan couldn't see anything else. Soon they were passing through a layer of yellow clouds that swirled before their eyes. Nathan gradually stopped floating but kept his place at the window. Unlike in the movies, space was pretty dark, but he could see the surface of Pluto beneath them. The mountains and valleys shone yellowish-white. Then everything suddenly got dark again and Nathan jumped.

"This is the underground cavern of Wellspirit," Jeannie said.

"How big is this cavern?" asked Nathan nervously. "Are we going to have to crawl around or something?"

"You'll see," she replied.

And then he did see. The ship was in a bright place now, and when he looked out the window land stretched out beneath them, with a cluster of buildings in the middle. It looked similar to Earth in some ways, but with more bright colors, and the buildings were round instead of square.

"Where does the light come from if we're underground?" he asked.

"It's all artificial. Our scientists developed it back on the homeworld."

"Homeworld?" Nathan shrieked. "What are you talking about?"

"I guess I never told you that part," Jeannie said. "My people aren't originally from Pluto. We emigrated there from another place, in another galaxy. That place was closer to our sun than Pluto is. That's why we breathe air pretty much just like Earth air."

Nathan nodded weakly. "At least I'll be able to breathe," he said. Pluto's atmosphere was mostly nitrogen like Earth's, or so it said on the internet, but he was still sure he wouldn't be able to breathe it.

The ship was descending far away from the cluster of buildings, in a blue field with patches of what seemed to be snow. Nathan saw one isolated structure beneath them. The top of it opened up like the barn roof had. He heard a tiny thump as the ship landed.

Jeannie went to open the door but Nathan hung back.

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

"Are they dangerous people?" he asked. 

"What people?"

"The ones who took the crown jewels," he replied. 

"We're not going to have to fight people," said Jeannie.

Then what was Jeannie going to expect him to do? Nathan wasn't afraid but maybe he was just a little nervous. He got out of the ship, but as he did so he noticed the gravity. Jeannie had been right, of course -- the gravity was much less on Pluto. Nathan felt light and floaty. It was all really strange. 

The building was plain white all over and empty except for the ship. They left it quickly, with Nathan trying very hard to walk normally. He expected to feel cold when they got outside, but it turned out that there was no snow. They were in a field of white feathers. 

"Um... are there a bunch of naked ducks somewhere?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, they do look like feathers, don't they? But they're bug ears."

"I didn't know bugs had ears."

"Ours do, and they shed them sometimes. These are the old ones they leave behind."

"Isn't that kind of gross?" asked Nathan. 

Jeannie shrugged. "No grosser than feathers, if you think about it."

Nathan looked up, expecting to see rock above him, but there was only bright light overhead. He couldn't resist the temptation to see what the low gravity was really like, so he started taking huge jumps, bounding farther up each time. He scattered bug ears everywhere but he didn't even care. It was amazing, and it was almost like flying. No wonder Jeannie hadn't remembered she couldn't fly on Earth. 

"Hey, stop it," Jeannie called to him. "Am I going to have to tie you to the ground?"

When he finally stood next to her she said, "I'll show you how to really jump. We're headed over there." 

Nathan looked where Jeannie was pointing and saw what looked like a forest. As they got closer, he saw that the trees had very short trunks but very long thick branches. Suddenly he realized one of them was moving. Not swaying in the wind, but moving through soil, plowing up ground in front of it and leaving a trail of dirt behind.

"Your trees move?"

"Those aren't trees. They're hydras. They spend part of their lives in water and part in the ground."

"Are they safe?"

"Oh, they'll be fine. They're just going to where they can get more light," Jeannie replied.

I meant are we safe from them, thought Nathan to himself, but he kept following her. 

Suddenly Jeanie stopped and whistled very loudly. Nathan heard a noise like the one the ship had made. Then a swarm of enormous bees flew toward them. 

"Look out!" Nathan shouted, but Jeannie just laughed.

"Relax," she said. "They don't sting."

Nathan stood stock still as one bee separated itself from the swarm and landed on Jeannie's shoulder. Close up, it didn't look that much like a bee after all. It did have delicate wings like a bee's, but its body was more like a tiny cat's, though it did have yellow and white stripes. As Jeannie had said, it didn't have a stinger.

"What is that thing?" Nathan asked.

"It's a leylan," said Jeannie, or at least that was what it sounded like. "She'll help us find the crown jewels. Try petting her! They're very friendly."

Nathan reached out carefully and stroked the leylan's back between her wings. He could swear he saw the leylan smile.

"So she knows where the crown jewels are?" Nathan asked.

"Leylans can see everything," replied Jeanie. "They can even see through stone. And they're very smart." 

Jeannie spoke one word to the creature and it flew off toward an opening in the trees, then turned back toward them.

"We'll just follow her," said Jeannie confidently.

Follow her where, Nathan wondered. But so far he had survived giant bees and trees that could chase him, so he was just going to have to see what else Pluto and Jeannie could throw at him.


	3. Chapter 3

The trees thinned out and they walked through a field of tiny, spiky-blue plants. Nathan could see a smooth line of bright green in the distance. "Is that water?" he asked. It wasn't the right color, but that didn't seem to matter here. 

Jeannie nodded. "We can jump again now the hydras aren't in the way." Soon Nathan saw a huge lake, green but beautiful. It looked like it would be impossible to get to the other side.

"We can't jump across that. And maybe you and the leylan can fly but I can't," said Nathan.

"Don't worry about that," said Jeannie. She said another word to the leylan and it flew out over the water. 

Then the leylan let out a sound of its own, a piercing shriek that made Nathan cover his ears. 

"Come on," Jeannie shouted, and she rolled up her pant legs and ran into the water.

Nathan had no idea what she was doing. He wasn't a very strong swimmer, so the idea of running out into a lake didn't appeal to him very much. But Jeannie seemed so confident! In the end he walked out with her, and watched as the water began to ripple. There was something big coming toward them.

Nathan ran out even further. "Jeannie, be careful," he shouted. He jumped in front of her, trying to place himself between her and the grey underwater creature approaching.

She only laughed though. "It's not going to hurt us. It's our passage across the lake."

Another strange animal he would have to trust. "Please tell me that isn't a whale," he said to Jeannie. He knew whales couldn't live in lakes but maybe on Pluto they could.

"No. We call them... well, in English it means moving rocks. Which is pretty much what they are."

She scrambled on top of the grey thing and gestured to Nathan to follow. He hesitated, then climbed up beside her. It was just like sitting on a rock. The leylan climbed on to Jeannie's shoulder again. She made a clicking sound and Jeannie nodded.

"We're going the right way," she said to Nathan.

"Um... good?"

"Your jeans are all wet," Jeannie pointed out.

"I know."

For a while he just sat watching Jeannie. He couldn't get over the fact that she was really an alien. He reminded himself that she was still the same Jeannie -- the girl who had watched the Harry Potter movies in tense excitement because, she said, the books had never reached Pluto. The girl who almost always kicked his butt in Street Fighter. The girl he had taught to play Rock, Paper, Scissors, though for some reason she often insisted on playing her own version called "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Giant Squid."

"Why did you sound so nervous when you asked me if it was a whale?" she asked curiously. The moving rock had begun its trip across the water, but Nathan still couldn't see the other side.

"I sort of have this thing about whales," Nathan confessed.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when I was younger I had to do a science report and I picked whales. And when I looked them up I found out a blue whale's heart weighs over a thousand pounds. That night I had a nightmare that I was trapped in a giant heart and... well, I was pretty little, and that really scared me. After that I changed my report to be about goldfish and I tried to stay away from thinking about whales."

"You never told me that before," said Jeannie.

"I never told anybody that before!" Nathan replied.

"Well, you really don't have to be afraid of the moving rocks. I'm not sure they even have hearts."

"How come there isn't a boat though?" asked Nathan. "I mean, if you can build a spaceship you must be able to build a motorboat."

"We tried that, but it scared the moving rocks too much, so we gave it up."

"I think I like this better than a boat anyway."

The moving rock didn't move with the waves and make you seasick like boat. It just kept going smoothly through the water. Nathan could see the farther shore now and some kind of yellowish structure stretching across it.

"How did the moving rock know where to take us?" he asked.

"The leylan told it," said Jeannie.

"But how did the leylan--" Nathan stopped. Maybe he was better off not thinking too hard about the fact that Jeannie could talk to animals.

"That's where we'll find the crown jewels," said Jeannie, gesturing toward the opposite shore. Nathan realized that he was looking at a huge wall, with the tops of round buildings behind it.

"Are we going to have to dig them up somewhere or something?" Nathan asked. He was very confused.

"Of course not! That would take forever."

"Right," said Nathan uncertainly.

Finally the moving rock stopped a few feet from the shore and Jeannie and Nathan waded through the lake. They both had soaking wet jeans on now but Jeannie didn't seem to care about that so Nathan decided he wouldn't either. 

As they got closer Nathan saw a huge door in the wall with a ring to pull it open. Jeannie walked up and pulled on the ring, as casually as Nathan would open up his own door at home. She just isn't afraid of anything, thought Nathan with admiration.

But after she opened the door, Jeannie stood biting her lip slightly. She still didn't look scared, but she didn't seem to want to keep going either. Nathan went to join her. "What's wrong?" he asked.

He looked inside the door. There was a short passageway that seemed to make a sharp turn.

"The leylan says that the crown jewels are in there," she said.

"OK, let's go!" said Nathan, sounding a little more confident than he actually felt.

Jeannie nodded, but when they went down the passageway they saw that it led only to another passageway which branched off in two different directions.

"I was afraid of that. This is a labyrinth," said Jeannie. "You can find those a lot on Pluto, especially in old buildings like this. It would take a long time to get through it. You might be late getting home if we tried."

Nathan wondered if "late getting home" was a nice way of saying "you might starve to death stuck in there."

"Well, what are we going to do?" he asked.

Part of him hoped that her answer would be "we give up on finding the crown jewels after all," but of course she didn't say that.

"I'm not sure," she admitted.

Nathan could see that she looked sad. He didn't really care about the crown jewels one way or the other but Jeannie definitely did, and he didn't want to disappoint her. Especially when he considered that it might be him who was slowing Jeannie down.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him. He turned to the creature on Jeannie's shoulder.

"Say, leylan, if you can see through stone, could you guide us through the labyrinth?"

The little creature bounced up and down and Jeannie gave Nathan a quick hug. "You are so smart!" she said. "Why didn't I think to ask that?"

Nathan had to admit that the labyrinth was pretty intimidating even with the leylan guiding them. It was very narrow and very dark, lit only by occasional holes in the roof. 

"Is it just me or does this place make you nervous too?" he asked Jeannie. 

"It does a little," she admitted. "My father's taken me through places like this for fun but never one this big or this complicated."

Finally they emerged into a larger, better-lit chamber and Nathan spent a few minutes just breathing. When he looked around he saw a door in the far wall, barely distinguishable from the rest of the stone. There was no ring on it, and there didn't seem to be any way to open it. It did have a small round circle carved in the middle, and something else that looked like writing carved around it.

He walked toward the door. The leylan made a few clicking sounds and Jeannie called out to him to stand still. "There's a force field," she said. "We can't see it, but it will stop us from going any further."

Nathan proved the existence of the force field by walking into it and hurting his nose. "How did you know?" he asked.

"I can read the writing on that door," she said.

"I can barely even see the writing," said Nathan. "Not that I could help, since I wouldn't even know the letters.

"My eyes don't work exactly like yours, I think," said Jeannie. 

She just stood there looking at the door, until Nathan started to wonder if she would finally give up now. He didn't want her to, though, and not only because he didn't want to go back through that labyrinth yet.

"Only small objects can pass through the field," said Jeannie. "Once the door opens, the field will disappear, but not until then."

"How come they locked the place up this well but told everybody how to get in anyway?"

"It's in code. A lot of people know this code now, but when the door was new hardly anybody did."

"Could the leylan get through?"

"Probably, but she could never open that heavy door." The leylan flew off toward it though, then came back and chirped again.

"She can see behind the door, and she says we have to throw rocks." 

"Well, that's easy enough," said Nathan, reaching for one of the many pieces of broken stone that lay on the floor.

"We have to hit that round spot or the door won't open."

He dropped the stone. "I'm pretty good at throwing, but not that good," he admitted.

"I think I can do it," said Jeannie. Nathan wasn't so sure, but he backed away to give her room to work.

Jeannie picked up a rock, looked at it and balanced it in her hand. Then she threw it hard at the door. It landed right on the circle. Nathan was impressed, and even more impressed when she did it four more times and the door finally opened.

Maybe her arms didn't work exactly like his either, thought Nathan as he walked toward the open door. That was a scary thought. What if Jeannie was some kind of superior being that thought humans were stupid or backward? But that couldn't be true. Jeannie saw something good in everybody she met, even Nathan.

"I know we need to go through the door now, but first, tell me. You're okay with me, right? You don't think I'm stupid because I'm just a human? And you don't want to, I don't know, hurt me or anything?" said Nathan.

Jeannie laughed, and the sound made him less nervous all by itself. "Of course I don't," she said. "I already said so. Why would you ever think I would do that?"

"I guess sometimes I wonder if you're still mad about what I did to you. Back then. I mean, even if you had been making up being from Pluto you didn't deserve to have that happen."

"You mean throwing the necklace?" Jeannie asked. "You apologized for that right away, and you know I forgave you. I didn't realize you were still feeling guilty."

"But you got hurt so badly," he said.

"How were you supposed to know I would try to fly?" Jeannie asked. "I was the one who made that mistake."

"I really didn't know," said Nathan. "But I still shouldn't have--"

"Nathan, don't think about it. I'm here now, and I don't have any broken bones, and I have the necklace, so you have nothing to be sorry for anymore."

"Well, I was a jerk back then in other ways," he said as they rounded a corner and he reached for Jeannie's arm to make sure he wouldn't get lost."

"Everybody acts like a jerk sometimes," said Jeannie.

"You don't," said Nathan.

"Sure I do. I just have to learn to control it as much as I can, because I'm going to be the Empress someday and people should like and trust me."

That was another thing Nathan hadn't thought enough about. Jeannie really was going to be royalty someday. He tried to picture her like an old-fashioned king on a huge throne wearing an ermine robe, but that just wasn't Jeannie. Would she have servants to wait on her? he wondered. That was normal for kings and queens, but it didn't sound like Jeannie either. She'd probably stand on her throne to change a light bulb or something because she didn't want to bother anyone else to do it.

They entered another large round chamber, but this one had some kind of animals flying around in it. Jeannie didn't seem to be afraid of them, so he walked toward them along with her. They didn't look anything like leylans though, more like pigeons except, well, rounder.

"The crown jewels," said Jeannie proudly. Nathan just stared. 

He started to say "Are you crazy?" but fortunately bit back his words. If she said these were the crown jewels then that was exactly what they were.

As he watched, the pigeon-creatures slowed their flight and circled Jeannie's head. They began to shine in different colors and soon they were large jewels, all circling Jeannie. She stood very still, the light of the different jewels shining on her. Nathan thought that right at that moment, she did look very like an empress.

"Sometimes the crown jewels get bored and run away, and I have to go get them," Jeannie said. The jewels landed on her shoulders. "They pick some pretty tricky hiding places."

"You could have said that at the beginning of all this," said Nathan. 

"It was more fun surprising you," said Jeannie. "And also sometimes I still forget that Earth is so different. On Pluto a lot of the creatures and objects we brought from the homeworld can change form. Now come on, let's get these back to my mom."


	4. Chapter 4

After dropping off the leylan in the forest, they flew to the city. They were able to land right next to the Royal Palace. It was a white sphere covered in ornate carvings which Nathan now recognized as Plutonian writing. When they drew close, Nathan saw large creatures standing next to the door. They had bodies that looked mostly like a human's, with arms and legs and a face with two eyes, but he couldn't stop looking at their wings, which were huge and patterned like a butterfly's wings.

"The royal guard," whispered Jeannie. "But they're just for show." 

There was a long hallway inside the door, with more butterfly creatures standing along the walls. Jeannie began to run past them, dragging Nathan by the hand. "Come on. I want you to meet my mom. The throne room is right there at the end."

There really was a throne room, but there wasn't really a throne. Jeannie's mom sat in a regular chair with a desk in front of her like any office worker. She looked just like Jeannie, with dark hair and the same dreamy look in her eyes. She ran out from behind the desk to hug her daughter, clearly much happier to see her than to see the crown jewels. She didn't even wear a huge flowing dress like a queen, just pants and a shirt. Not that Nathan was disappointed. A throne and a crown would probably just have intimidated him. 

Nathan tried to turn his head away to give Jeannie and her mom some privacy, but suddenly Jeannie's mom was hugging both of them and laughing just the way her daughter did. 

"Nathan, I'm really happy you've been such a good friend to Jeannie. I know kids can be unaccepting anywhere, but it's been especially hard for Jeannie on Earth."

Nathan just backed away a little and looked uncomfortable.

"It's wonderful to have someone who really accepts her the way she is," Jeannie's mom went on. 

He winced.

"Is something wrong?" Jeannie's mother asked him.

"I didn't accept her the way she is," he said softly. 

"You're talking about the time she fell? You know she forgives you for that, and so do I."

"It's not just that. I always thought she was lying about coming from Pluto, or that maybe there was something wrong with her. I thought that the reason I didn't have many other friends was because Jeannie was scaring them off with her outer space stories, and it made me feel sorry for myself. And sorry for her."

Jeannie's mother nodded. "I understand. You're only human." Then she laughed, thinking about what she had just said. "I mean, you're a person, and people make mistakes. You got over those feelings."

"I didn't get over them though!" Nathan protested. "I was still thinking those things a few hours ago. I even stole a copy of Jeannie's birth certificate out of her father's file box, so I could prove she didn't come from Pluto. I thought that way she could act more normal and make more friends. I was ashamed of Jeannie, and I wanted her to change, and that wasn't right. I didn't ever think she really came from Pluto until I saw the spaceship."

He looked at Jeannie's mother, expecting her to be furious, but she only looked a little confused. "What exactly is a birth certificate?" she asked.

"It's an Earth document," said Jeannie. "I couldn't go to school without one, so Dad made up a fake one."

The Empress nodded. "Can you show it to me?" She still didn't seem angry. 

Nathan shook his head. "No, I... lost it."

"You lost it?"

He rubbed his foot on the floor. "Kind of on purpose."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, Jeannie started talking about Pluto and how kids here accepted her and you loved her and everything. She looked so happy that I didn't want to mess that up, so I threw away the birth certificate."

"I think that says a lot about whether you really accepted Jeannie," said her mother gently. "You wanted her to have her dream, even if you thought it wasn't real."

"But it was real!" Nathan said. "And I'm here, and... this is all pretty confusing."

"Of course it is," said Jeannie's mom. "But Jeannie likes you a lot, and I'm sure she isn't angry with you."

Jeannie blushed just a little bit and shook her head. "You tried to help me even though you thought I was making up stupid stories. I was really glad you were my friend all that time, even though you thought there was no such thing as a princess from Pluto."

"I have a present for you, Nathan," said Jeannie's mother. She handed him a necklace just like Jeannie's. "There's a tiny piece of Pluto in here," she said. "That way you'll never forget."

"I don't think I could forget this anyway," said Nathan, but he took the necklace and put it over his head.

"Listen," Jeannie's mom said. "Why don't you two go for a walk and Jeannie can show you more about Wellspirit."

Suddenly Jeannie looked very uncomfortable. She was almost never nervous like that, and Nathan couldn't understand what was going on.

"Maybe we should just stay in the palace," she said. "I can show him my room here."

"Jeannie, don't be silly. Nathan's come all the way to Pluto and he deserves to see the sights." She sounded just like a mom anywhere, with that "Don't mess with me," tone in her voice.

"What was that about?" Nathan asked Jeannie as they headed down the hallway again, past the Royal Guard.

"Nothing," said Jeannie. "Well, I mean, something, but it's not important."

"Is something wrong?"

They left the palace and began walking down a wide street. The butterfly creatures were everywhere, some walking and some flying overhead.

Finally Jeannie sighed. "I have to tell you something," she said hesitantly. "The people you're seeing here--"

"The butterfly creatures, you mean?"

"I guess they do look a lot like butterflies to you. That's what a Plutonian really looks like." Jeannie said this very softly, looking at the ground and avoiding Nathan's eyes.

"I don't get it. You and your mom and dad don't look like that."

"We didn't always look like this. Remember how the crown jewels could change form? We can too, and we made ourselves look human so we could communicate with Earth people. Even my mother did, because someday she wants to come to Earth too."

"You mean you're really one of those flying things?" said Nathan.

"Yeah. I mean, I used to be, and maybe someday I will be again. But right now I'm just like a human, and on Earth I stay human all the time, I promise."

"That is so cool!" Nathan said.

Jeannie blinked. "It is?"

"Yes! You're like a real alien."

"It doesn't bother you?"

"No," said Nathan. He could see the relief in Jeannie's face. "I think those flying... um... people are really beautiful. Not that you're not pretty now but--" Nathan decided to stop right there before he made anything worse.

"I'm so glad you think that. I was so worried that you'd hate me, or at least be mad at me for not telling you sooner."

"You couldn't tell me any sooner, because I still didn't believe you, remember? I mean, if you had said, 'Hey Nathan I also actually have giant butterfly wings,' I'd have just told you to shut up." 

"Not really. You'd probably just nod and smile and try to get me to watch a superhero movie so I'd talk about something else."

"You caught on to that," said Nathan.

"I still want to watch movies with you though."

They kept walking, and Jeannie began to point out to Nathan how Plutonians went shopping, worked, and went to school. "Schools are pretty different here. Students mostly choose what they want to learn, even when they're really young."

"But you do have teachers?"

"Sure. But they don't give us homework or anything like that."

Nathan thought Pluto was sounding better and better. "You must really hate school on Earth," he said. 

"Because people pick on me?"

"Not just that. I mean, you have to sit there in class and be bored when you could be here on Pluto doing all kinds of fantastic things."

"It's not so bad. I have one really good friend, and he makes it better for me."

It was Nathan's turn to look at the ground. "I have something to tell you too," he said.

"You're really a giant beetle from Mars?" asked Jeannie.

"Nothing that great," said Nathan. "I want to ask you something."

"What?"

"Do you want to come to the dance with me on Saturday?"

"Really?" she asked.

"Of course really."

"Even though people will be laughing at me?"

"They can laugh all they want. I don't care."

"Even though I might wear a weird dress and dance really strange? I'm only used to Pluto dances."

Nathan took her hand and they began walking again. "I think you should wear a pair of giant butterfly wings," he said. "That would really give people something to talk about."


End file.
